A Company Is Producing Thousands of Cheap, Floating Nuclear Reactors

And, crucially, the timeline for global deployment will shatter conventional paradigms in the energy industry.Called Compact Molten Salt Reactors, the new reactors are roughly the size of a shipping container, and are slated for mass production on the scale of thousands. Once completed, they'll be lifted onto floating barges to be deployed throughout the world, and then see deployment at unprecedented speeds.

One of the reasons for this is the company's use of nuclear fuel mixed into fluoride salts. This mixture forms a liquid above 932 °F . This allows it to flow in and out of the reactor, which functions at pressures comparable to the external atmosphere. The liquid salt works as a coolant on nuclear fuel, supplanting the conventional high-pressure water cooling system.

Of course, you don't want to touch this rock. It's radioactive, which is bad. But a contained solid is easier to avoid than an ambient cloud of radioactive gas that can plume its destructive way across a continent,. Rocks can be safely removed with safety teams using Geiger counters, and, since it has low solubility in water, there's far less danger posed should it sink into the sea.

Surprisingly, Schönefeldt wants accidents to happen."Hopefully, there will be a lot of accidents because we will have a lot of these reactors," he added."What we do, instead of reducing the likelihood, is reduce the consequence of even the worst disasters. Or even acts of war where you actually bomb the reactor. The consequence there is that this fluoride salt will flow out of the reactor, or explode out of the reactor, and lie on the field. It'll solidify.

, it seems nuclear power might become a common sight on barges floated out to major metropolitan areas.Stay ahead with the latest science, technology and innovation news, for free:

I'm guessing these are Thorium fueled.

What a stupid idea.

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